


The Weight of Iron

by boredealis



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fae & Fairies, Other, Tony Stark is a Fae
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-04 19:11:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17903897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boredealis/pseuds/boredealis
Summary: Ever since Tony was a child, iron has burned his skin. There were other things, less easy to explain. The whispers he heard, sometimes, from snow. The colors he saw sometimes, in the corners of his eyes. The nightmares he had, sometimes, which showed him shadowed and distant futures. These things, he dismissed. They were the simple eccentricities of a billionaire genius.Until one day, Steve Rogers told him of the fair folk.





	The Weight of Iron

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by some posts and ideas found on the Tumblr of Itsallavengers. Your comments and thoughts are much appreciated—not sure precisely where I plan to go with this, so any ideas are welcome!

_For he comes, the human child,_

_To the waters and the wild_

_With a faery, hand in hand,_

_For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand._

* * *

 Sarah Rogers placed the offering on the back porch. They had very little to eat, but she gave what she had. The bread and the milk, and a bowl of fresh, cool water.

“Do you have to give them food? They never take it.” Her tiny little Steve, with his flaxen hair, had already formed a furrow between his eyebrows. He stood with his thin arms crossed, just ready for a fight. Just like his father.

“It’s not about food, darling.” She sat up, brushing off her skirt. “It’s about respect.”

“They’re bullies. You said they hurt people.”

“Honey, don’t say things like that.” She kneeled next to him, holding his shoulders. “They are not…like us, in a lot of ways. But they understand respect. They will give back what they get.”

He bit his lip and looked away. They’d just had the talk, about bullies. He still bore the bruises that had made it necessary, angry and dark on his pale skin. “They just take. They never help. Just take and take.”

She smiled at him because once, she, too, hadn’t believed. Then, her little boy survived when the doctors told her that he was certain to die. “They’ll help us when we need them. Not when we want them.”

He nodded, reluctantly, eyes downcast. “Okay.”

The next day, the bread and milk were gone, the bowls licked clean. And a few boys, who happened to go to Steve Rogers’ school, disappeared, quite suddenly. Sarah saw the haunted eyes of their mothers in the neighborhood, and ached deep down for their undoubtedly gruesome fates. But she did not apologize, nor comment on it. All those in her neighborhood knew the way of the fair folk. And it would not do to be ungrateful for their gifts.

* * *

Once, not long after the boy became the soldier and the soldier became the martyr, a human man landed his plane on Her ice in Antarctica. The ice breathed around Her, and She rose up. It was odd, foolish even, for a man to venture to these lands during this week. The rusalki were in full bloom, pulling themselves up from the depths they had died in and venturing through the driving snow, their voices long and stretched in the wind. She had little use for human men—She had played with many of them and had found their minds dull and useless. So constrained by morality and by blood and bone.

She watched the man from below the ice. Large, dark eyes surveyed Her lands. She reached out to him, touching the edges of his soul, and all at once knew a crushing, deep desire. A man had died here. Not in the lands that She haunted, no, but somewhere in the snow and the ice. Beyond the desire was madness and intelligence, one stronger than the other, and, well. He sparkled, he gleamed, he raged with all of it.

He was not unlike some of Her brethren.

He would not see Her, not unless She wanted him to. She drifted further upward, further toward the light, the ice bending around Her, the snow reaching out to meet Her. _Tell me, tell me, love_ , She whispered, a voice of a thousand voices. _Where did you find these sparkling things? Where did you find the heart of space? How long did it live in you, how much did you let it take?_

Of course, he did not hear. These men, so blind. He was yelling, something in that harsh bark humans called a language, and walked back toward his plane. She had no need to follow him. She knew the scent of his soul now, needed only to tilt Her head and breathe for him.

The snow and ice knew Her. They spoke with the confidence of the old and powerful, asking Her if this was a path She wanted to walk. They asked Her if she saw her future, staring Her down. They asked Her if She saw the yawning portal, the Titan, the boy that would be Hers and never Hers, would save the world but never himself, would be made of burning iron. And She told them yes, a thousand times yes, because She was not a mother then, and did not care of cost.

She visited him in his dreams. She was beautiful, in them. Soft curves, dark hair, red lips. She was beautiful, but the man was no fool. It was good, because if he were, She might have eaten him. Just a little. A nibble. No need to be a glutton.

“What are you?” he asked. Yes, he saw Her whiskey eyes. The unnatural gleam of the gold in them. But yet, perhaps despite himself, he was drawn to Her. She was a magnet, and he was made of iron. He walked up to Her and She touched his skin and there was no searing burn of true iron. He flinched from Her.

“You’re freezing,” he whispered. Fascination. Fear.

It didn’t matter, because he wanted Her.

She stepped into him, brushed Her freezing lips against his. “Fuck me,” She said, and nothing else was necessary. It was a gift, from Her to him and him to Her, and so there was no debt to be repaid. She vanished from his dreams and climbed back into the ice. He went back to his life partner ( _wife_ , a glacier told Her one day, sighing as it melted and cracked) and She went back to the depths of the frozen sea.

She thought She would keep the child, when he was born. He was so beautiful, and She loved him. His screams were a beautiful song. When She held him, he screamed louder, and for the first time in Her thousands of years of existence, She learned pain.

Her world was not his.

There were many things of Her that he would carry with him, yes. But he did not belong with Her. He belonged with the humans. The humans would hurt him, She saw. Tear at him. Flash those all-seeing lights in his eyes. Force him behind burning shields of iron. But he belonged there, all the same. There was kindness waiting. There was warmth. There was the smile of family, of friends, and it all was his to take.

She knew what She had to do.

 _I will never hurt him_ , the snow said. _He will never freeze_ , the ice said. The water said nothing, because it, too, knew the future, and knew it could not make promises.

She left him on the Stark’s back porch, the snow caressing his face. She leaned down, touched his plump little cheeks. Looked into his big, whiskey gold eyes. So much of Her. But death roared at Her heels, and his too, and they had much different paths to tread.

“Dá fhada an lá tagann an tráthnóna,” She murmured, a thousand voices as one. “Live well, Iron Man. Until we meet again.”

She returned to the ice. She had a man to search the Arctic for. Her son would need him soon.

* * *

Tony Stark’s mother could not be a mother to him. But Maria Stark was kind. She was broken down by Howard, a man who was driven by obsession with a man and the Arctic and, more recently, another woman. But she was kind, and she saw a child without a mother, that needed her. She gathered the boy into her arms, held him tight, let him take the warmth from her body. She would love him, she would be there for him, she was his mother through and through, and nobody would ever know that she was not.

Sometimes the promise was a hard one to keep.

Tony was…odd.

Tony was allergic to iron. Irritating, yes. The doctor assured them that such an allergy was not too unusual—“slightly severe, yes,” she’d said, wide eyes on the vivid, seeping burns on his skin—and that was that. Sometimes Tony would run up to her, babbling about the little ladies and little men he saw, so pretty, even though their eyes were a little weird and Mama, Mama, could they come in for milk and bread? Sometimes she would walk into his bedroom and it would be so cold that ice would be forming on the windows. He would tilt his head sometimes, lost in thought, like he heard things she could not.

Oddest of all were the nightmares. When he was four years old, he woke up, screaming, one night, and told her that the bad men were coming for them and that the bad man would kill her. She brushed it off, of course, as a small child that may have seen a violent movie scene and had a nightmare about it. But when she had been kidnapped, with Tony, and the men had pressed a gun to her head and screamed that he would shoot her, no question, she remembered that dream. From that point on, when Tony woke up screaming, she did not ask questions. She just listened.

Tony was odd, yes.

Some things were easily explained. He was a genius, after all. Eccentricities were to be expected. But if people knew the things he could do, those glowing golden eyes in the night, endless space and darkening stars behind him, all they would do was hurt him. She was his mother, and he would not be ripped away from her to be experimented on.

Money was no object, and Howard was off chasing the ghost of a dead man. With the ferocity of a mother, she researched, and she worked. Yet, despite her best efforts, there was nothing. No information. Dr. Xavier assured her that Tony was not a mutant. She hated the way he looked at her son, the curiosity and the fear mixed together. The best scientists and doctors in the world told her that Tony was a perfectly healthy, normal little boy. The magicians she contacted were mostly blatant scam artists. Those who weren’t were unwilling to talk when she told them, in the vaguest terms, of Tony’s abilities.

One of her leads had grabbed her arm, so tight it left bruises. He whispered, “Don’t speak of them so loud. You never know when they listen.” And refused to talk any further.

The failure was grating. Disappointment after disappointment. Whispers of magic, of secret cities, of people who did not want to be found and could not be found. And, all through it all, the ubiquitous “them,” the ones she was warned not to speak of.

One night, as she tucked Tony into bed, his eyes widened. The gold bled in, the stars and emptiness as well. He looked at her with those endless, empty eyes, so misplaced in the face of a little boy. He wrapped her nightgown around his little fist.

“She’s coming to take me away from you,” he whispered.

“Who?” A horrible, wild fear reared its head. She needed to get her bag, pack, quickly. Nobody would take Tony. Tony was hers. “Who is taking you away? What’s going to happen? Tony, baby?”

But the gold had already faded from his eyes. His little hands released their grip from her nightgown, and she ran to her room. She had a suitcase. She could pack clothes for herself, and Tony, and some toiletries. She would tell Tony they were going on a vacation, a fun vacation, he’d been wanting to see dinosaur fossils. She opened the door, and—oh. Oh.

A tall, thin figure, outlined in blazing moonlight, stood next to her window.

“Who are you?” she snarled, bracketing her body in front of the door.

Maria did not know how to shoot a gun. Her husband was a weapons designer, but she never thought to learn. She thought, she was a woman, a housewife, it didn’t matter. She ached, ached, to be holding a gun in her hands. The figure turned, slowly, slowly, and said, “You’ve been looking for me.”

“Who are you?” Maria repeated.

“I am the Sorcerer Supreme.” The woman turned fully. She was beautiful, all gleaming pale skin, her head shaved. Now that Maria could see her better, she saw that the woman wore some kind of robes, like a monk. Maria had heard, in her months of searching, of the Sorcerer Supreme. That the Sorcerer was outside of time and reason, in a realm outside their own.

“I don’t care who you are, you need to get out of my house.”

“I know about your son.”

Her blood pounded, her hands shook. “You stay away from him, you stay the fuck away from my son—”

“Tony is not human,” the Sorcerer Supreme cut her off smoothly.

“I…you…”

“At least, not entirely,” the Sorcerer Supreme amended. She looked at Maria, her eyes colorless in the dark. “You are in horrible danger.”

Maria dropped her hands from the doorway. “You heard. About his—what he can do.”

“Yes.” The Sorcerer Supreme turned back to the window, outlined in moonlight once again.

“Can you take it away from him?” It was horrible, to put trust in this woman. But deep down, some sort of primal instinct, told her that this woman did not pose a threat. That this woman was old, that this woman was wise, that this woman would do the best she could to help.

“Yes.” Maria gasped. Hope. Such a new feeling. “Not…entirely. And not forever.”

Not entirely. Not forever. Fine. Fine. She could find another, new solution later. This was her boy, her child. He needed her. “What do you want? I’ll pay you anything, I have money, I have…” What would sorcerers want? “…jewels?”

The Sorcerer Supreme chuckled. “I don’t want your jewels. But I do need something from you.”

“Anything,” Maria said.

The Sorcerer Supreme stood in silence for a long time. She looked out over the grounds, and Maria waited, barely breathing, barely even able to think.

“Memories,” she said, at last.

Maria took another breath. Memories. In all these months of searching, for cures, for answers, she knew that whatever price there was to pay for magic, it was not a cheap one. Memories. What could they be of? What could this woman take from them?

But this was Tony.

_Tony._

Maria did what she had to do.


End file.
